Renewable Energy Source - Other than Solar?

[DeuteriumCore]

So I just started playing again after a couple of months and I found out I can't do the Polluted-Water-Fertilizer-Maker-Natural-Gas-Generator thing anymore because I'd now need 9 Fertilizer Makers to run 1 NG Generator. Which makes doing this setup use more energy than produce. So, what's the alternative now?

P.S. I have a game with no NG geysers, my dupes are close to dying of suffocation, I have barely reached the surface, I have way too much hot water which I have no means to cool, I'm running out of cycles aaand I'm still hoping to still save the game.

[Christophlette]

At the bottom of the map is the oil biome. There is a lot of oil that can be turned to petroleum and natural gas to produce power. Plus there are 1 to 3 oil reservoir that will output oil and natgas if you put water in it. So power is renewable this way !

[Jumpp]

Are you sure you have no NG geysers? I've also just started playing again after a couple of months, and among other things I've found that geysers are lots easier to overlook than they used to be.

Old days, you could spot them from miles away. Now they can be pretty stealthy.

 

To more directly answer your question without getting super spoilery:

Much like you, I'm back after a few months. And like you, I've found that the massive fertilizer NG thing doesn't work anymore.

In comparison to when you and I last played, I've found that in general there's more natural fuel sources lying scattered about the world, usually visible to the naked eye but often very easy to overlook if you aren't examining the area very closely. I've also found that the ice biomes are, when thoroughly searched, even more useful for heat dissipation than they used to be.

[bountygiver]

NG geysers are buffed significantly since the fert maker rework, you just need a high pressure chamber to store all the extra NG so it can last during the geyser dormant period. And NG geysers should be guaranteed, a map will always spawn between 1 and 2 of them. (second spawn replaces chlorine)

[Jumpp]

Also? The surface is an incredibly hostile environment. I drove fast for the surface in my first game after hibernation, thinking that I could set up a passably effective solar power system. This turns out to be a fantastically difficult project and in my current game I'm not going anywhere near that blasted hellscape until I've run out of fun things to do in the nice safe deep.

[DeuteriumCore]

6 hours ago, Christophlette said:

At the bottom of the map is the oil biome. There is a lot of oil that can be turned to petroleum and natural gas to produce power. Plus there are 1 to 3 oil reservoir that will output oil and natgas if you put water in it. So power is renewable this way !

If I hadn't wasted my time on that PW-Fertilizer-NG setup I would have had reliable oil power by now. My dupes will be dead before I'd reach the first oil dome. 

 

6 hours ago, Jumpp said:

Are you sure you have no NG geysers? I've also just started playing again after a couple of months, and among other things I've found that geysers are lots easier to overlook than they used to be.

Old days, you could spot them from miles away. Now they can be pretty stealthy.

 

To more directly answer your question without getting super spoilery:

Much like you, I'm back after a few months. And like you, I've found that the massive fertilizer NG thing doesn't work anymore.

In comparison to when you and I last played, I've found that in general there's more natural fuel sources lying scattered about the world, usually visible to the naked eye but often very easy to overlook if you aren't examining the area very closely. I've also found that the ice biomes are, when thoroughly searched, even more useful for heat dissipation than they used to be.

 

6 hours ago, bountygiver said:

NG geysers are buffed significantly since the fert maker rework, you just need a high pressure chamber to store all the extra NG so it can last during the geyser dormant period. And NG geysers should be guaranteed, a map will always spawn between 1 and 2 of them. (second spawn replaces chlorine)

I just found one using debug. Still far. I probably will be starting over again. I'm not sure what you mean by "more natural fuel sources." Only coal is the only one I noticed that is just lying around. Lol, my game has 3 Thermo-nullifier in a single biome but still...

 

6 hours ago, Jumpp said:

Also? The surface is an incredibly hostile environment. I drove fast for the surface in my first game after hibernation, thinking that I could set up a passably effective solar power system. This turns out to be a fantastically difficult project and in my current game I'm not going anywhere near that blasted hellscape until I've run out of fun things to do in the nice safe deep.

Good tip. I'll keep that in mind.

So for mid-game, it is either oil or get-lucky with a nearby NG geyser? I wonder if there are more options.

 

 

[PhailRaptor]

Ranching Hatches for Coal is an option to keep you going for quite some time.  I believe feeding Sage Hatches with a Cooked Food diet was mathed out to be the most favorable resource input to Coal output method.

[bountygiver]

1 hour ago, PhailRaptor said:

Ranching Hatches for Coal is an option to keep you going for quite some time.  I believe feeding Sage Hatches with a Cooked Food diet was mathed out to be the most favorable resource input to Coal output method.

no don't do this, they only need to eat < 1 Kg of food per day and you end up with only grams of coal per day, it's better to just use mass stone hatch and your raw minerals can definitely last long enough until you get all the other energy source ready.

[suicide commando]

The way the game is set up, no 1 source of power is 'effective' enough to supply all your power needs until you set up some crazy big systems like oil boilers and the like.

One of the most important things I've learned to do to make the best of a NG geyser is to be frugal with it. Pump the NG out as much as possible so when it's active, it will always spill out it's maximum amount of gas it can, store the NG in a high pressure chamber using a door compressor and you'll be able to store the excess NG for when it's dormant. A second thing to use is a smart battery on your main grid that is supplied by your generators. Use it to control whether or not your generators need running, so you don't waste gas when you don't need your generators to supply power.

As for other sources of power, the most reliable I've managed to build are shine bug solar plants. Using a waterlock on one end of a room to make the room 'open' to the environment, and a lure to keep the bugs near the solar panels, you can produce up to 760W of power once you get yourself enough shine bugs. ( 50 or so should do for 1 plant )

 

Another way to produce power, is ranching hatches for coal ( stone hatches eating your sedimentary rock and other less useful building materials should work very nicely ).

If you have a lot of water, you can use a SPOM to make more O2 for more dupe power, and store the excess Hydrogen, using it for AETNs, filling up rooms that need to be hydrogen filled, and produce a metric ton of power with hydrogen generators.

Eventually digging down and getting yourself some oil is always nice, using refineries to process to petrol requires dupe attention though, so not THE most effective way to use oil. Boiling it somehow with a volcano or other means and turning it into NG has been the most effective endgame power source afaik.

[erso]

11 hours ago, DeuteriumCore said:

So I just started playing again after a couple of months and I found out I can't do the Polluted-Water-Fertilizer-Maker-Natural-Gas-Generator thing anymore because I'd now need 9 Fertilizer Makers to run 1 NG Generator. Which makes doing this setup use more energy than produce. So, what's the alternative now?

P.S. I have a game with no NG geysers, my dupes are close to dying of suffocation, I have barely reached the surface, I have way too much hot water which I have no means to cool, I'm running out of cycles aaand I'm still hoping to still save the game.

Also, if you've already thought of it yourself: An Electrolyzer generates 120g Hydrogen at 120W and an Hydrogen Generator produces 800W at a consumption of 100g of Hydrogen. Would not this solve the oxygen / energy problem?

[blash365]

14 minutes ago, erso said:

Also, if you've already thought of it yourself: An Electrolyzer generates 120g Hydrogen at 120W and an Hydrogen Generator produces 800W at a consumption of 100g of Hydrogen. Would not this solve the oxygen / energy problem?

And how much energy does one electrolizer and the two pumps required to move the gases cost? Maybe including filters for the vents. Right, just about 800W. (120W (electrolizer) + 2x240W (gas pumps) + 240W (liquid pump) + 2x 120W (filters)) * uptime (<100%). The electrolizer will also struggle to have 100% uptime, so you might not get 100g/s hydrogen out of it. It's a nice addition, but certainly not suited as a backbone of your energy framework.

I'd say stone hatches eating some of the meteor-shower materials might be a renewable resource. you might need to magma-cook them to igneous rock though. Also petroleum combined with oil wells or slicksters. Unless you want to go for the oil cooking route.

[Priitm]

look forum for self powering oxygen module, there are several.

 as i know every map has atleast 2 nat gas geysers, usually outputing bit more than one generator worth of gas as average. 

no colony should die because power shortage - there are always hamster wheels...

just cut down unneeded power usage until you get power shorted out, as example use ice to cool down your water instead of aquatuners.

[BlueLance]

11 hours ago, DeuteriumCore said:

P.S. I have a game with no NG geysers, my dupes are close to dying of suffocation, I have barely reached the surface, I have way too much hot water which I have no means to cool, I'm running out of cycles aaand I'm still hoping to still save the game.

You are always guarenteed 1 NG geyser, with a 50% chance of another or a chlorine geyser.

 

4 hours ago, DeuteriumCore said:

So for mid-game, it is either oil or get-lucky with a nearby NG geyser? I wonder if there are more options.

My energy source is hydrogen, and since I get water from steam vents I ain't struggling, but there are a bunch of options, it just depends on how you play.

In the event my main power supply runs out, my secondary one kicks in (Natural gas) and if that runs out then coal, then petroleum, then steam, then dupe/solar power.

Also automation, use it as this will save you on a tonne of power since your generators wont consume a resource when your batteries are full

[WanderingKid]

54 minutes ago, blash365 said:

And how much energy does one electrolizer and the two pumps required to move the gases cost? Maybe including filters for the vents. Right, just about 800W. (120W (electrolizer) + 2x240W (gas pumps) + 240W (liquid pump) + 2x 120W (filters)) * uptime (<100%). The electrolizer will also struggle to have 100% uptime, so you might not get 100g/s hydrogen out of it. It's a nice addition, but certainly not suited as a backbone of your energy framework.

Not as much as you described.

120w / electrolizer. said electrolizer needs 1 gas pump to function 1 every 5 seconds for the Hydrogen.  Once you've gotten the gas layout to behave, you don't need any filters for fueling the generator, it'll stay consistent.  I typically use them to prime the system them remove the standard filter.  You also only run the gas pump when it's active, which should be about 1/5 of the time for full Hydrogen 500g grabs.  So that's about 48W on average.

A water pump feeding an electrolizer at full speed requires 1kg/s.  Your liquid pump runs 10kg/s.  9/10's of the time (per electrolizer) it's idle.  That's 24W.

Even if you only get a portion of the electrolizer running, the ratios stay the same. It costs about 192W to actually run your electrolizer.  Let's assume attaching another pump for O2 distribution costs 240W.  It's really a 3:2 ratio for Electrolizer : Gas Pump in my experience, but even if it's one pump / electrolizer, you've still got extra electricity.

The electrolizer would provide an extra 300+ W each.  They really shouldn't be a struggle to get setup.  The part that can kill you is the heat, but you can eat that price for a while (100+ cycles) without your dupes getting too uncomfortable until you can deal with it.

[_Q_]

Hydrogen is good to use. Its running almost all base equipment, some oxygen is vented into space to avoid over pressure, I can add up to 7 electrolyzers with that water source.

[heckubis]

vertical spom setups have the advantage in heat reduction(slightly to extream). even if the input water is 40c strait from a filter have the water cool the o2 before the electolizer gets to use the water dont bother cooling the hydrogen if its being used for power. the hotter gasses will raise faster then to cooler gases. without much tinkering at all you can put out o2 at just above the water feed temp.

[SkunkMaster]

How about a sunroof turbine ? 

Mind you, this was just a test build, a "real" build could have longer thermal pipes and stack 2-3 turbines.

 

ran for an entire cycle with just that bit of piping. 

and took 1 cycle to regain the heat it had spend